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Kengo Kuma and Associates has inaugurated what could be this year’s most interesting new cultural project, the new Audeum (or Audio Museum) in Seoul, South Korea, following a two-year construction period. The world’s first museum experience dedicated to sound is approximately... View full entry
Montreal-based Moment Factory has completed an immersive multimedia experience inside the iconic Dôme des Invalides in Paris. The project, titled 'AURA Invalides,' consists of a 50-minute experience combining video mapping, lighting, special effects, orchestral music, and sound design to... View full entry
“It’s about a change in consciousness that leaves a memory,” [Ed] Cooke said of the project. “Can people have an experience where they touch some new territory of consciousness, not in a way that is like an altered state, but one that actually leaves a trace?” — The New York Times
The 50-ton space, which is suspended some 34 feet above the ground, has a capacity of 250 people and was promoted by co-designer Merijn Royaards as a “sensory laboratory that [...] bends time, expands consciousness, and punctures our perception of reality” at the project’s announcement... View full entry
The Shed at New York City’s Hudson Yards has unveiled plans for a new, temporary 65-foot spherical concert hall feature to be placed inside the arts venue’s McCourt performance space this summer. The space is the product of architectural designers Ed Cooke, Merijn Royaards, and Nicholas... View full entry
A fascinating addition to the Chinese cultural program has come online this week with the completion of OPEN Architecture’s Chapel of Sound in Chengde, Hebei Province. Overlooking the ruins of one of China’s most important historic sites, the Ming Dynasty-era Great Wall, the concert hall... View full entry
Creating a work about the sinking high-rise was an easy choice, according to Martínez. “We started researching San Francisco, and current events in the city, and the Millennium Tower popped up,” Martínez said. “We knew almost instantly we wanted to do a project that was in some way going to connect with some of most expensive real estate on earth collapsing under the weight of itself as a metaphor for late capitalism.” — Hyperallergic
Cristóbal Martínez and Kade L. Twist of interdisciplinary arts collective Postcommodity were compelled to make an art piece based on the sinking, tilting Handel Architects-designed Millennium Tower in San Francisco, as a timely metaphor for late capitalism collapsing under the weight of... View full entry
A team of Boston University researchers recently stuck a loudspeaker into one end of a PVC pipe. They cranked it up loud. What did they hear? Nothing.
How was this possible? Did they block the other end of the pipe with noise canceling foams or a chunk of concrete? No, nothing of the sort. The pipe was actually left open save for a small, 3D-printed ring placed around the rim. That ring cut 94% of the sound blasting from the speaker, enough to make it inaudible to the human ear.
— Fast Company
"The mathematically designed, 3D-printed acoustic metamaterial is shaped in such a way that it sends incoming sounds back to where they came from," explain the Boston University researchers behind the discovery: Xin Zhang, a professor at the College of Engineering, and Reza Ghaffarivardavagh, a... View full entry
Entering into a new space means stepping into a new acoustic arena. Whether subconscious or at the forefront of our attention, the way sound resonates in a built environment is part of a crafted experience influencing how people relate to a space. The presence of a circle or semi circle in... View full entry
Detached from the rest of the building for soundproofing reasons, the 10,000 panels that line the central auditorium are the result of parametric design, a process of creating multiple individual designs using algorithms.
A million individual cells ranging from four to 16cm long are cut out from the panels [...]
The ivory coloured gypsum fiber acoustic panels contain a seashell motif and were designed by Swiss architect Herzog & De Meuron with help from German studio One to One.
— Global Construction Review
Interior view of the central concert hall. Photo: Iwan Baan."It would be insane to do this by hand," GCR quotes Benjamin Koren, founder of One to One, the studio that created the design algorithm for the concert hall's acoustic panels. "That’s the power of parametric design. I hit play, and it... View full entry
Last month, Cavalry 360°, a vast site-specific musical instrument designed by NEON opened on the banks of the North Tyne, UK. The structure uses the force of 32 wind turbines to create an ever-changing sound of the cavalry moving across the landscape—horse’s hooves hitting the ground... View full entry
To live in New York means to get habituated to the noise of everyday life here...As a neighborhood becomes more homogenous, and its residents sync their noise patterns, noise complaints tend to go down. This may explain why, controlling for other factors, gentrifying areas of the city display higher levels of noise complaints. City residents stop consciously recognizing noise as novel, and it becomes background, even if their bodies don’t always recognize it as such. — Nautilus
“We all love to hate the noise. And yet sitting in silence, I do not feel as if I’ve found an escape from pain: I have simply traded it for a new variety. Shockingly, I realize I want to trade back.”Writer Susie Neilson delves into the pros and cons of urban noise pollution, a truly defining... View full entry
Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for the New York Times, joins me for our first One-to-One interview of 2016. I wanted to talk with Kimmelman specifically about a piece he had published just at the end of last year, called “Dear Architects: Sound Matters”. The piece considers how an... View full entry
The primary strategy for blocking airborne sound is to add a layer of dense, flexible material to the problem surface...Stopping vibration-borne noise is usually trickier and more expensive. It requires suspending walls, ceilings or floors so that the vibrations aren’t conducted to a building’s framing, which can transmit sound throughout a building...A compounding issue is that it takes only a very small gap to let in a lot of sound. — NYT
Roy Furchgoff surveys the noise-control industry, which at least anecdotally in New York is growing. Related and recently, architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and producers Alicia DeSantis, Jon Huang and Graham Roberts documented the sounds of some archetypal NYC spaces. View full entry
we rarely talk about how architecture sounds, aside from when a building or room is noisy. [...]
Sound may be invisible or only unconsciously perceived, but that doesn’t make it any less an architectural material than wood, glass, concrete, stone or light. [...]
Acoustics can act in deep, visceral ways, not unlike music ... And while it’s sometimes hard to pin down exactly how, there is often a correlation between the function of a place or an object and the sound we expect it to make.
— nytimes.com
Architecture critic Michael Kimmelman and producers Alicia DeSantis, Jon Huang and Graham Roberts document the sounds of some archetypal city spaces, conveying the personality and subtle (or sometimes not) musicality of interiors. View full entry
Museum displays are typically meant to be seen and not touched, but a recent wave of exhibitions is upending those rules. Take DELQA, an interactive music and light installation opening in the New Museum's NEW INC space on August 6. Showcasing the music of Matthew Dear combined with Microsoft's Kinect technology, the project allows participants to touch, push and poke suspended mesh walls to manipulate a musical composition, creating their own unique experience of the space. — core77
If you're on the hunt for weekend plans in NYC, DELQA will be at the New Museum only from August 6-9!More on Archinect:How architecture helped music evolve - David Byrne Frank Gehry: Is Music Liquid Architecture?How an "egalitarian incubator" music venue hopes to revive Brooklyn's art... View full entry
